Weekly RoundUp 10-9-2012 (1 Viewer)

[Bill Coolidge]

I've never had to show the reciept when using the coupon but this time, they didn't even give me a reciept. I handed the girl the discs and she handed me the coupons. I don't know if that's a lazy employee or if they don't require the reciept anymore. Something tells me that it kinda varies from location to location or employee to employee.

I had that happen to me and then when I went to purchase the Blu-rays, they demanded the receipt. I explained that I wasn't given one and had to dig in my heels a bit before they honored the coupons but they did honor them. The coupons did look pretty fake. They were photocopies of some master coupon but they were what customer service gave me and I wasn't given a receipt.

 

[Charles Smith]

I'd been given the photocopied ones all along, last two or three times they ran the deal. Yesterday's the first time I got the glossy color printed ones.

 

[Malcolm R]

Hey Malcolm...how's an FYE rebate done these days?  Is there any cutting of UPC symbols any more?  Or is there an extra UPC sticker on the outside of the cellophane?  Or, is no UPC required?
Do they need the original receipt...or do they print up an extra receipt for you?
I was thinking of going to Best Buy and doing my first-ever Upgrade & Save and getting the Prometheus blu for $14.99.

Hey Mike,
I just use the UPC price sticker (the white and yellow one in the upper right of the front) they stick on the outside shrinkwrap of all their product. It has the same bar code and number as the UPC on the box, and I've never had an issue. The cashier always hands me an extra copy of the receipt (it even says "Rebate Receipt" at the top). This seems to work well since if there's a defect with the disc the packaging is still intact and you still have a receipt for an exchange.
The rebates are a pain, but it often makes FYE competitive with the lower prices in the Round-Up. It's funny since my FYE is in a mall literally right down the hallway from Walmart. But Walmart has no major competitors in this area (no Best Buy or Target within 50 miles), so the local FYE is often lower than Walmart on new releases.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Thanks, Malcolm. I haven't done an FYE rebate in a long time.

I've got two FYEs near me and they have been having much better pricing in the past several months...using nice big yellow plastic cards amongst the titles to indicate some major sales/reductions.

My favorite aspect of shopping at FYE is they usually have a pretty active intake of used titles...with some pretty decent pricing on the used. Combined with pretty regular discounts on the used inventory (Buy Two Get One Free, e.g.) and my Backstage Pass discount, I have gotten some good deals there recently.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

FWIW, my local Super Walmart had a large cardboard display with all the store-exclusive Bond stuff.

 

[David Norman]

FWIW, my local Super Walmart had a large cardboard display with all the store-exclusive Bond stuff.

I've seen that in a couple stores, but finding it can be a pain. One of the stores it was out front of the movie section, but way off at the edge of the area and facing away from the others so you had to walk around it to see what it was.
The second store was even worse, it was on an endcap facing the back wall of the stores sort of in a corner near the clearance shelf and at least 3 rows outside the normal video section and even
the Video game at the last aisle of the computer equipment. That store must have had at least 8 different displays of DVD.Blu scattered all over the back of the store and I was doing almost a grid search trying to track them down. I ended up with all the exclusive Bonds and several of the 7.88 Horror Blurays that have eluded me in the past.
The Target Bonds were even a bigger pain. It took 4 stores to finally find all 3 of them. Luckily I was on a scavenger hunt for other things anyway so i just added some stops along the way. I even found 2 Targets that didn't destroy their cases in those security contraptions including one pristine copy of HP7 Ultimate which is the first copy I'd seen that had not basically been chewed up by those spider wire things.

 

[Malcolm R]

I've seen that in a couple stores, but finding it can be a pain. One of the stores it was out front of the movie section, but way off at the edge of the area and facing away from the others so you had to walk around it to see what it was.
The second store was even worse, it was on an endcap facing the back wall of the stores sort of in a corner near the clearance shelf and at least 3 rows outside the normal video section and even
the Video game at the last aisle of the computer equipment.

In my store, it's sort of between the shoe dept and baby clothes instead of adjacent to electronics. Very odd.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

It's not set up in the Hello Kitty department?

 

[Mike Frezon]

Originally Posted by Jeff Cooper /t/324264/weekly-roundup-10-9-2012/60#post_3987896
It's not set up in the Hello Kitty department?

Nice.

===========================

Well, I am no longer an Upgrade & Save virgin. I carried my bag of five DVDs into Best Buy and shopped. I found two Blus to buy (Prometheus @ $19.99 and Fargo @ $9.99). I went up to customer service and gave them my two least desired DVDs. I got my coupons and they checked me out right there. Easy and painless...and a really good deal.

No wonder its been such a popular program. And I've got so many crap DVDs.

 

[David Norman]

  Nice.
===========================
Well, I am no longer an Upgrade & Save virgin.  I carried my bag of five DVDs into Best Buy and shopped.  I found two Blus to buy (Prometheus @ $19.99 and Fargo @ $9.99).  I went up to customer service and gave them my two least desired DVDs.  I got my coupons and they checked me out right there.  Easy and painless...and a really good deal. 
No wonder its been such a popular program.  And I've got so many crap DVDs. 

Mike have the BBY reorganized their Media sections in your area yet. Apparently it has been decreed that by NOV 1 all BBY DVD and Bluray sections will be combined into one large section organized
alphabetically into 7-8 genres (Action/Scif, Comedy, TV, HBO, Drama, Family, Horror, etc). Now to browse you have to go by all the New Release stands (my stores have at least 4 of these and some as many as 8 different stands, multiple different endcaps, the 9.99 section, the 7,99 section, the Special Sale section (last month it was TV, this month it's Horror). So to browse you now have to go through mutliple genre sections to see all the Blurays. if you want a specific disc, you have to guess which genre then look alphabetically and hope you are a little psychic.
4 of the 5 store Ive been in this week have done this and it's an utter disaster to my brain. I can't even imagine why anyone thinks this is a good idea.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Nope. My store is still separated in terms of DVD and Blu-ray...but there are already all these different sections/racks/etc. with similar pricing/sales/etc.

But, tonight, I was able to browse all the Blu-rays from A-Z. Then I had to look at all the various free-standing racks of Blus. Then, all the end-caps for Blus. Then in the special Halloween section for some more blus. Then the Blu on TV section. Then the..we;;, you get the idea. It's pretty screwed up...but at least the DVDs aren't mixed in. That'll just make things even more confused.

 

[Moe Dickstein]

My store just did this reorganization.
It makes me never want to shop there again. All the other stuff I can handle but bad organization is where I draw the line.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Just an FYI on the BB trade and upgrade. I have used the upgrade coupons to order pre-order blu-rays at the Customer Service desk that don't come out until after October 20. They might not be able to scan the SKU of the coupon to process, but if they process it from their 'express' register, they can just manually take off the $5 from the pre-order and have the blu-ray shipped free TO YOUR HOUSE. I've now done this on two pre-orders. Don't take no for an answer from a lazy clerk.

 

[TonyD]

Go ahead with that but i dknt think it was intended to be used that way.

 

[TravisR]

My store just did this reorganization.
It makes me never want to shop there again. All the other stuff I can handle but bad organization is where I draw the line.

Same here basically. I'm not saying that I'll never go there again but the slim number of times that I do go there just got slimmer. I can handle a sales staff with less than no knowledge of their products (they get paid crap so I don't blame them for not caring) and I can handle them not properly stocking items (I'm able to get there early when I want something) but when they seem to willfully reorganize their products so it's much harder to what I'm looking for, I'll take my business to Amazon.

 

[DavidJ]

I've actually been pretty pleased with Best Buy lately. I've actually had a few good customer service interactions in a row, but they did just reorganize their DVDs and Blu-rays together. This I hate.

 

[Citizen87645]

Between my visits on Tuesday and Friday, my local Best Buy reorganized the Blu-ray and DVD shelves as people have described. Since I had a list of titles I was looking for it definitely threw me off and made me think the titles were no longer available, until I realized what had been done. I can sorta see going alpha with both formats, since that's how I have things I my collection, but throwing in the genres is a bad move.

 

[Jason_V]

The reorg has not happened at my closest store.

Yet.

 

[Charles Smith]

To tell the truth, I haven't liked ANYONE'S reorganization of genres ever since Sci-Fi somehow universally became part of Action/Adventure, Mystery became part of Drama (at least I think that's where it went), and Thrillers became part of Horror. Maybe. Who knows. For me, this all started a few years back when Borders entered its death throes and severely cut back their inventory.

 

[Charles Smith]

But honestly, I don't know which is better -- a lot of categories, or one simple A-to-Z sort for the whole shebang.

I just know Best Buy's current shenanigans in this respect are pretty bad. Talk about fixing something that isn't broken. How about fixing the stuff that is?